Posted on 03/21/2004 11:21:58 AM PST by Issaquahking
FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. -- Paul Watson leans back into a fluffy couch surrounded by swords and confides that his reputation as a crazed, eco-terrorist pirate actually helps him perform his mission.
He used to have to actually ram and sink whaling ships to be effective, Watson explains. Now he's considered so dangerous that all he has to do is show up.
During the past 30 years, Watson takes credit for sinking eight whaling ships and ramming six other vessels. He's faced off navies and brawled on Canadian ice over the killing of baby harp seals. He was beaten, shot at and jailed in six countries.
A self-appointed ocean cop, Watson enforces international fishing laws the way he sees fit as captain of steel-hulled ships and crews of idealistic volunteers in his low-budget Sea Shepherd Conservation Society based on San Juan Island, Wash.
Along the way, Watson has earned two wildly different reputations -- one as the brave cult hero willing to risk his life for endangered animals, the other as the high-seas vigilante and fatherly mentor to eco-saboteurs everywhere.
Today, Watson, 53, is perhaps more beloved and reviled than ever. As Hollywood aims to immortalize him with a movie about his life, critics cast him as the villain trying to hijack the Sierra Club.
He crashed the country's oldest and largest environmental club last year by getting elected to its 15-member board. Watson now is widely suspected of plotting with like-minded animal-rights activists and population-control advocates to take over the club.
Watson snickers at the ruckus. "I'm not leading anything, and there's no takeover," he insists. Rather, he says, the Sierra Club's old guard is simply unwilling to listen to new voices -- but his own words tripped the alarms.
"We're only three directors away from controlling that (Sierra Club) board," Watson told an animal-rights gathering last September. "And once we get three more directors elected . . . we'll change the entire agenda of that organization."
That statement was stamped on postcards mailed last week to 500,000 Sierra Club members, urging them to help prevent Watson and like-minded outsiders from taking over the club at its spring elections.
Robert Cox, a former Sierra Club president who sits on the board with Watson, says club members grilled Watson about his takeover comments and past eco-militant statements at the last national meeting.
"He put a very good spin on his statements," Cox says. "I think Paul walks right up to the border of condoning violence but seems to duck when he's called on it."
Actions dictated by conscience
During an extensive interview with The Oregonian, Watson explained his views on violence and law-breaking, at times straddling both sides of an argument.
"I don't believe in violating laws," he says. "I tend to look at myself as someone who enforces or upholds laws." Later, he shifts: "Sometimes you have to break laws because it's dictated to you by your conscience, because it's the moral thing to do."
Watson supports freeing animals trapped in research labs, but opposes destroying the labs themselves. Yet, he doesn't distance himself from former Sea Shepherd crew member Rodney Coronado, who served time after leading an arson and vandalism campaign against Oregon and Washington mink farms and animal research facilities in the early 1990s.
"If he felt he was doing what he needed to do, well that was Rod's decision, and he paid the consequences for it," Watson says. "In a world which is rapidly being destroyed, with incredible diminishment of the environment, I don't think Rod's crime is really up on the top of the list."
In February, Watson's wife, Allison Lance Watson was indicted on four counts of lying to a grand jury investigating the May 2000 arson of an Olympia timber operation. Investigators allege a truck she rented was used by her friend in the crime. She is free pending an April 19 trial.
Asked whether his wife was involved in any animal-rights groups that might engage in arson, Watson says, "Not that I know of."
Commanding speaker
Paul Watson is a sturdily built man with a quiet forceful demeanor, thick white hair and the verbal skills of a debate champion.
His ability to spike his colorful tales with bold commentary and re-created dialogue helps him churn out provocative books and makes him a hit on the speaking circuit with animal-rights groups, on college campuses and with some Hollywood crowds.
He sees himself as a modern-day Copernicus, trying to make humans understand they're not the center of the universe. He insists all living species should be treated equally.
Watson was raised and schooled in Canada, the initial stage for his direct-action brand of environmentalism. He led a small Greenpeace team to Canada's eastern coast in 1976 to try to stop sealers from clubbing thousands of baby harp seals.
Watson's strategy of putting himself and colleagues between seals and sealing vessels sparked fights and publicity about Canada's practice of thinning its seal population to save the cod fishery.
But it was French actress Brigitte Bardot who turned the plight of baby seals into an international drama when she flew to Canada the following spring to support Watson. She kissed him upon meeting him and said, "You are a hero, Paul," according to his account.
Watson parted with Greenpeace soon afterward, raised enough cash to buy a stout steel ship and crossed the Atlantic in 1979 in pursuit of a rogue whaling ship he'd heard about. He found it, then chased it into a Portugal harbor and rammed it at 15 knots, disabling it.
"It was probably the most ecstatic experience I've ever had," Watson says.
His other acts included landing on a Siberian beach to document the killing of gray whales and sinking two Icelandic whaling vessels at the dock after he concluded the nation was violating a whaling moratorium.
Watson has had recurring conflicts with Icelandic and Japanese whalers and Canadian sealers. A mob of sealers stormed Watson's hotel room in 1995 and beat him to the point of hospitalization while he tried to fend them off with a stun gun.
He led the protest against the Makah Tribe as it resumed traditional whale hunting off Washington's coast in 1999, and he rammed a Costa Rican fishing boat in 2002.
Number of arrests
Watson has been arrested many times on accusations of everything from trespassing to attempted murder, but most charges were dropped, perhaps because foreign governments wanted to avoid courtroom dramatics in which he would put their fishing practices on trial, as he has in Canada. He claims to have spent 120 days in jail.
Regrets and apologies are not Watson's style. His job as a conservationist, he says, is to rile people up, "to make them think, because people are responsible for these problems. Even if they're angry at me, in the back of their minds they're thinking, 'Why is this guy doing this?' "
It's the United Nations' World Charter for Nature, Watson says, that empowers him and other citizens to police the seas. The England-based International Whale Commission disagrees, having banned Watson from its meetings since he sank the Icelandic boats.
Watson's career leaves many people breathless -- in awe or revulsion.
Roger Payne, a scientist best known for discovering that humpback whales sing songs, credits Watson with drawing the world's attention to whale poaching. Payne, who advises Watson, served on the International Whaling Commission's scientific advisory board for more than 10 years. The commission, which asks nations to police their own whalers, is toothless, Payne says: "There is no enforcement of any kind."
Farley Mowat, 82, calls it one of the greatest compliments of his life that Watson named a Sea Shepherd vessel after him. The popular Canadian nature writer, best known for "Never Cry Wolf," explains Watson this way: "He believes in what he's doing, and he believes in himself. . . . If his personality comes on a little strong at times, I believe that's permissible if his achievements are as remarkable as Paul's have been."
Martin Sheen calls Watson a "personal hero of mine" in the forward to Watson's 2002 book, "Seal Wars." Other Hollywood supporters include Pierce Brosnan, William Shatner and Richard Dean Anderson. Their screen personas amuse Watson.
"We've got James Bond, the president of the United States, Captain Kirk and MacGyver," he says, "so how can we lose?"
Watson's detractors shake their heads at his fanfare.
He's a dangerous inspiration to people like Michael J. Scarpitti, aka Tre Arrow, the high-profile Portland protester and fugitive who was caught March 13 in Canada and now faces arson charges in Oregon, says Patti Strand, who co-authored "The Hijacking of the Humane Movement: Animal Extremism."
"By thumbing his nose at the law for more than 20 years -- and getting away with it, Paul Watson has become a charismatic leader and role model for an entire generation of eco-terrorists like Tre Arrow," says Strand, of Portland.
David Martosko, who tracks the animal-rights movement for the Center for Consumer Freedom in Washington, D.C., says, "I would never make the leap to call Paul Watson an eco-terrorist, but he is certainly one of the three or four most notable cheerleaders and supporters of young people who blow things up to protest the way animals are treated in this country. And he does it with a smile."
"He has two faces in the movement," Martosko says. "He is the out-there, brash, some say maniacal, zealot ramming boats and sinking ships, and then he tries to portray himself as the kindly, grandfatherly, soft-spoken gentleman. It doesn't wash. He has trained some of the most radical and violent thugs involved in the animal-rights movement in North America. The rank-and-file Sierra Club members should be terrified."
Rumors of a takeover
Watson says he initially was encouraged to run for a seat on the Sierra Club board by the late David Brower, the club's best-known leader since founder John Muir.
The Sierra Club has 750,000 members and an $85 million annual budget guided by a board of 15 directors who are elected to three-year terms by dues-paying members. Elections are usually uneventful. But this one -- conducted by mail from March 1 to April 21 -- is a tempest.
Watson's comment to the animal-rights crowd -- that if like-minded candidates won three of five open seats he could seize control of the club -- sparked takeover fears that were then fanned by a Southern Poverty Law Center report. It said racist groups were encouraging followers to join the Sierra Club in time to vote for anti-immigration candidates.
The club takes a neutral stand on immigration issues. But Watson and several other board members want it to use its clout to lobby Congress for immigration caps because they see unchecked population growth as the gravest threat to the country's environment. Yet, so far, they lack the votes to change club policy.
Rumors of a possible takeover conspiracy linking animal-rights and anti-immigration extremists inspired Groundswell Sierra, a group of club members that is warning fellow voters about a coup attempt.
Its releases include a collection of Watson's quotes, such as one at a 2002 animal-rights convention: "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history." In another quote, Watson gives advice to new animal-rights activists: "Don't get caught."
Protest campaign
Thirteen former Sierra Club presidents found scattershot evidence of a takeover conspiracy convincing enough to call it one of the most serious threats the club has ever faced. Famed civil rights attorney Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is so troubled that he's running for the board as a protest candidate.
Jill Workman, chairwoman of Oregon's Sierra Club chapter, joined Groundswell to help oppose any takeover. "I don't know Paul Watson, but I've read the statements he's made, and they concern me," she says.
Watson says that his tongue-in-cheek quotes are taken too literally, and that his threat to the Sierra Club is vastly overblown. He simply wants the club to represent a broader range of voices. "You never really get any moderate change in society unless you have extremist viewpoints," he says. "You go for the extreme and compromise on the moderate."
Setting out for sea
Once the repairs are finished later this month, Capt. Paul Watson will steer the 157-foot "Farley Mowat" out of Seattle's Lake Union toward the ocean.
The Farley Mowat is a 46-year-old Norwegian research vessel outfitted with water guns, a cannon that fires 2-inch balls, and loudspeakers. The sign in the galley says, "Ocean Warrior." The vegan cook is Alex Cornelissen.
Cornelissen, 35, sold his house and quit his graphics artist job in Amsterdam, Netherlands, to join Sea Shepherd soon after hearing Watson speak. He crewed on an anti-whaling run last year to Antarctica and was later arrested in Japan with Watson's wife for diving into a fishermen's net and freeing 15 dolphins.
Regrets about hooking up with Sea Shepherd? "It was the best decision I've made in my life," he says.
The Farley Mowat's next stop is the Galapagos Islands, where it will bring more supplies to a sister ship Watson loaned to Ecuadorean officials to help arrest poachers in one of the world's largest marine reserves.
Watson's daughter, Lilliolani Lum-Watson, 24, says it used to upset her to hear her father called an eco-terrorist. Not anymore. "I know that in 50 years nobody will remember those comments. They'll just remember what he's done," she says.
As for Watson, he says his legacy is in Hollywood's hands now.
He's been spending time with Sean Penn during the past six months, he says. This year's Academy Award-winning actor is preparing to play Watson in a movie that will focus on his 1979 whaler-ramming in Portugal.
Watson understands the power of film.
"We live in a media culture, so that when Sean Penn becomes me, he'll be more me than I've ever been," he says. "And not only that, but what was not acceptable will become acceptable. Society might frown upon what you do, but when they make a motion picture about you then, hey, it's OK."
He smiles. "It even worked for Bonnie and Clyde."
Jim Lynch: 360-867-9503; lynchjames@comcast.net
The Farley Mowat is a 46-year-old Norwegian research vessel outfitted with water guns, a cannon that fires 2-inch balls, and loudspeakers. The sign in the galley says, "Ocean Warrior." The vegan cook is Alex Cornelissen.
Who would have thought that Seattle would allow a privately owned war ship in their city?
I wonder if the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives knows Paul is the owner of a cannon?
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